


The Walk

by linguamortua



Category: Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Business, Drinking, M/M, Massage, Old Friends, Self-Pity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-02
Updated: 2017-11-02
Packaged: 2019-01-28 06:10:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12600000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/linguamortua/pseuds/linguamortua
Summary: We walked around a lakeAnd woke up in the rainAnd everyone turned overTroubled in their dreams againVisiting time is overAnd so we walk awayAnd both play dead then cry out loudWhy we always cry this way?- The Cure, 'The Walk'The worst part is, LandolikesHan.





	The Walk

‘Holy hell,’ said Han, arching and grabbing for Lando’s arm. Lando slapped his hand away and kept working.

‘This is exactly the kind of thing, Han,’ he began, and then faded out, deep in concentration with a furrow between the precise, dark arches of his brows. Han laughed, a breathless, pained noise. Lando was careful and skilled and yet—

‘You don’t have to maul me about.’

‘Do you want an infection?’

‘Listen here, _mother_ ,’ Han said, and Lando flipped the wad of gauze onto the floor and took Han’s chin between his thumb and finger. ‘Oh, fine,’ Han argued to himself, and he leaned in to kiss the smile off Lando’s face.

So that was the first time—the first kiss, at least, because in those early months and years it seemed that Lando did little but stitch, patch and disinfect Han as he staggered the long walk into each grimy spaceport room. Lando Calrissian was technically also a smuggler, but his great gift was charm. Lando brokered the deals, Han went to collect. Han’s neck wound up on the line each time. Still, money was money, and it wasn’t as if Han’d been doing any better alone.

Besides, the attention was nice.

‘Are you enjoying this?’ Lando asked, drawing Han down after him onto the bed. Han gave a guilty start, suddenly stricken with the fear that Lando was Force-sensitive.

‘I hate this,’ Han lied, his hands working at the tiny, pearlescent buttons of Lando’s jacket. ‘Doing your dirty work, floating around in that rust-bucket while you sit here and chat up women.’ He tugged the coat down Lando’s shoulders, refusing to look him in the eye. Lando laughed and slid his hands up under Han’s shirt, nestling them into the curve of his lower back. ‘Coming back all busted up.’

‘Don’t I always take care of you?’ Lando retorted as he dropped his jacket on the floor and kicked his shoes off. Han made an argumentative noise into Lando’s neck. Words were hard to form; his cock was throbbing with all the insistence of three weeks out in the black on his own, only a computer program for a co-pilot. He was desperate, and not stupid enough to stop to argue properly.

Lando, it turned out, was as irritatingly and effortlessly smooth in bed as out of it. He seemed to take great pleasure in slowly reducing Han to a sweating, panting mess. Han would dearly have liked to complain but rational thought and speech were becoming exceptionally difficult under Lando’s talented hands and mouth.

‘Screw you, though,’ he managed, as Lando turned him over and started doing something to Han’s spine with his thumbs.

‘That’s what I’m doing,’ Lando retorted. There was laughter in his voice; Han prickled at the thought that it might be _laughter at_ and not _laughter with_ him. Still, this was Lando, who had his back and never complained when Han fell into his quarters wanting a medpack or a brandy or someone to bitch to. Lando, who was certainly Han’s best friend, and probably his only friend, and was unlikely to screw him over unless the prize was really good. Who cheated at sabacc but always shared the winnings when it was time to drink.

Han groaned when Lando’s hands reached his ass, pressing and rolling out the tension. There’d been a girl on Coruscant once who’d offered the same service. She’d not been half as good, and she’d drugged his brandy besides and absconded with his credits.

‘What do you get out of this?’ Han mumbled into the pillow. Lando paused for a second.

‘You’re a cynic.’

‘What do you get?’ Han repeated.

‘You,’ Lando told him. Han craned his head back to look. A faint sweat-shine had come up on Lando’s face, and his lips were parted. He was not unaffected. It had been a long time since anyone had looked at Han like that.

‘Usually people don’t want that,’ Han said. He looked away, over at the floor and their haphazard pile of clothes.

‘Shouldn’t scowl at them, then,’ Lando said. He slid down the bunk, springs creaking, and before Han could ask what he was doing Lando had run his thumbs down Han’s ass, opening him up. If asked, Han would have said that putting his tongue anywhere near a spacer’s sweaty ass was near the top of the list of sexual practices he had no interest in. Lando had no such hangups and, it turned out, getting rimmed by Lando Calrissian was a near religious experience.

‘Stars and—’ Han moaned, clutching at the bunk sheets and praying to whatever deity that he didn’t disgrace himself by jizzing untouched.

 

* * *

 

The walk from to the Falcon to the spaceport office was longer or shorter depending on your importance, or whose ass you were kissing, which in Han’s experience amounted to the same goddamn thing. Close to the offices and the speeder stands and the hotels were the expensive ships, the luxury pleasure craft and the military vessels and the rich kids’ zippy little planet-hoppers. The bays were large and privately-staffed, with walkways that extended on smooth tracks and covered areas in case of inclement weather. If you really made it, the officials came down to you, bustling into your private bay with datapads and making sure nothing got in the way of you flinging your stacks of money into the local economy. Or so Han had heard.

In the promotional material for interplanetary spaceports, they always got a shot of the luxe spacecraft at their slick, convenient wharfs. Sucker people in. Oh yeah, Han knew that trick—show ‘em something good, whet their appetite, hope you could flog the rest of it while they weren’t paying attention.

Walk a little further and you got to the middling merchant-class ships, modest family vessels and the mini-liners bringing in holiday makers. Disembarking here meant you had to share space under the covered walkways leading up to customs. Push your way through slow-walking holidaymakers, or hire a taxi speeder, dodging vendors selling hot food or cold drinks or souvenirs. It was okay. Han had made it up there once or twice. If Lando was paying. Or he was meeting someone with standards. Not even high standards, you know. Any standards.

Mostly, and particularly today, limping in with a blown engine, he was parked way out at the end, along a jetty so flimsy that jumping down from the Falcon’s cargo bay seemed risky. Next to the Falcon, three hulking rancors were unloading metal crates from their freighter. The crates had air holes and emitted alarming noises; Han kept a wide berth and didn’t make eye contacts with the rancors. People got torn apart for that kind of thing. He wanted to keep his hide intact.

Not that it was very likely. His first drop had gone great, which should have tipped him off. He’d switched out some furs for bootleg liquor on a little ice planet that reminded him of Hoth, bolted down a quick meal and made for his next stop. The papers Lando had forged for the liquor hadn’t been nearly convincing enough, and without Lando actually present to talk over the discrepancies, Han had to shell out a hefty port fine that all but swallowed up their profits for the whole run. The dried rations he’d managed to purchase had been loaded aboard, though, and he’d been cautiously optimistic that at least they wouldn’t make a loss.

Then, twenty-four hours out of Minak IX, the damn crates had begun to smell, warming up in the cargo hold. When he cracked one of them open, he almost vomited. Bad goods, sold cheap, and no fucking recourse. Wasn’t like the insurance companies would cover a tin can operation like his.

He stamped along the rickety jetty, smelling faintly of spoiled food. His next meeting was going to go poorly. If he flew away in the Falcon with all his parts intact, it’d be a win. But Han had always been the losing type.

He had lost for a long time and, it turned out, he had plenty more losing to do.

 

* * *

 

Losing, and loss, and endless long, lonely spaceport walks.

  
To Han’s surprise and chagrin, the pressures of political office had done little to age Lando. He looked more polished and better fed, in fact, and he had not a grey hair or wrinkle more than he had twelve years ago. Even a cursory look in the mirror told Han that he himself was far less well-preserved, and so when Lando swooped down upon him and told him he looked well, Han’s answer was shamefully sullen.

‘Cut the PR crap, Calrissian, I look like bantha shit.’

Lando’s smooth, toothy smile didn’t waver; after all, Han thought sourly, there might be a camera about. He took Han’s arm and began to lead him along the broad, clean pedestrian walkway to the private speeder parked on the corner. It was perfectly quiet inside the speeder, and the windows were tinted for discretion. The seats were deep and soft and Han hated it, hated the luxury, hated Lando’s success. Lando watched him with gentle amusement, as though Han were a stray dog about to do something entertaining. Han hated that too. The worst of it was that being in Lando’s company was worth every indignity, and it was taking all of Han’s willpower not to reach for him right here and now.

‘You make me feel like an uncultured animal,’ groused Han a little later, tearing a crust of his bread into strips and scattering crumbs on the table.

‘You are an uncultured animal, darling.’ Lando whisked the crumbs away with a flick of his napkin. ‘But that's all right. I only invite you here for one thing.’

‘... fly all the way out here for a pity fuck,’ Han rattled on. Lando topped up their brandy glasses and a tiny green pill appeared between his fingers with a flourish. Han snorted his appreciation for Lando’s enduring sleight of hand and nodded curt assent. The pill fizzed momentarily on contact with the brandy. Almost immediately, it dissolved into nothing. Han reached for the drink with a greedy hand.

 

* * *

 

Lando’s sheets were soft on Han’s skin and the room kept to the precise temperature Han enjoyed. Somewhere, the gentle sound of water running kept away any tiny noises from outside, or any little beeps and whirrs of cleaning droids. The lights were dimmed to mimic what Han considered the comforting half-light of a running ship. That was how well Lando knew him. It should have felt like a sanctuary—if he trusted anyone, he trusted Lando—but Han was restless. Sometime in the early hours he rose, slipping out of bed and creeping across the thick carpet. The door closed almost silently behind him.

The faintest orange glow warmed the horizon as he stood at the enormous windows, drink in hand, looking out over the city. Lando had done well for himself. _Cheating little bastard_ , Han thought to himself, feeling ashamed as he did so. They’d come up from nothing together, and it wasn’t Lando’s fault that Han had managed all of three rungs up the ladder before—

‘You’re allowed to enjoy life, you know.’

Han turned. Lando, nude in a careless, leonine kind of way, was standing in the bedroom doorway and watching him.

‘I’m enjoying myself.’ Han raised his glass.

‘We’ve got hours of night time left. Hours until my aides start pestering me with problems.’

‘I’m not tired.’ That was true. Or mostly true. He’d be tired later, on the long haul back out through the ‘roid belt. Right now he was just antsy, out of sorts, eager to be away again.

‘We don’t have to sleep.’

‘Have a drink with me.’

Lando walked over and Han thought for a moment that he was going to pour himself a brandy. Instead, Lando took the glass from him, set it down on a side table (on a _coaster_ , even), and drew Han towards him by the hips. Lando had a very intense gaze; smouldering. Hard to lock eyes with him when he was powerfully open, honest and vulnerable. It felt like all Han’s secrets were being exposed; except, Lando already knew all his secrets and kept him around anyway, and that was the worst of it. Lando liked him and, gods help him, Han liked him back. After all these years, it made the walk worth it.


End file.
